Six months to the day, we all went over to the quarantine place to collect the dogs. It was a Sunday, and it was closed. We stood there and couldn't believe it. So I went in and pleaded with the security guard to let us in and let us have our dogs, gave him the form showing when they'd arrived. And he said no, that it was more than his job was worth, and I went back to the car. So Ozzy basically said, Fuck this, and he started climbing over the fence. The security guard came rushing out shouting what the hell did he think he was doing and the rest of it. Then the guard recognized Ozzy as he was perched on top of this barbed-wire fence and he relented, and let Ozzy go in to get the three dogs. There are some occasions where being famous has its advantages, and this was one of them.
They were never the same again. For the first time in his life Baldrick lived up to his name: he came out with barely a hair on his head. It is the cruelest, cruelest thing, and I would never, ever do that again to any animal. Thank goodness there are now animal passports.
The idyll couldn't last. After a year Ozzy was itching to do something. At the time I did think that I could have just melted into domesticity, though I don't know how long it would have lasted. So I thought, Let's just go on a festival tour next summer. At a festival you have nothing to look after but yourself and a few of your crew. It's like taking a package vacation compared to organizing a transpolar expedition.
When you manage your own tour, as I had been doing with Ozzy ever since the beginning, the pressure is enormous. Each night you have to go into a different venue and do everything. You have already employed a tour manager to get you there in one piece, a production manager to take care of the production lights, sound and union crew, and a stage manager to run the stage as the show starts. But that still left a lot for me. The first thing I had to do was make sure everything was there on the "rider" of the contract: these are things the promoter has agreed to provide.
First there was the technical rider, meaning what the band needed in terms of lights and sound if they were not taking their own: follow spots, operators for the follow spots, lighting rig with 200 to 500 multicolored lights, breakdown of the sound system. If the building is new enough, then it would have an electrical supply powerful enough to maintain all the lights and sound. If not, the promoter would have to bring in an outside generator. All that would depend on the building. Then there would be all the stuff concerning the union: in most of the buildings you have to have union crew because they're union-run. This applies to some venues in England and all venues in America. In practical terms, this means they have to help you unload the trucks, they have to help you put up the lights and sound, even if you don't need them. Some of the buildings are so strict you cannot even bring in outside caterers. You can't even bring in your own dresser without having a union dresser in the building too. Because you have to pay them anyway, you get them to do something useful, like the washing or whatever. Then there's the crew food: the promoter will need to know what you need for your crew to eat. Some might be vegetarian, so they'll need to be told that. All this is on the technical rider.
Then there's the artists' rider. These have become notorious over the years, but I never played that kind of game. It was started by spoiled American rock bands in the eighties and was utterly childish--they did it just to see how far they could go. I've seen it all. Everything from rock bands who were on heroin so would need adult diapers because they were incontinent, to a prima donna who wanted a hundred Jo Malone candles in her dressing room and rose petals strewn everywhere. You would get people in Bumfuck, Idaho, who'd want sushi and yellowtail on their rider. You're never going to get sushi in the middle of the country, and if you did you'd probably get food poisoning.
Our artists' riders were always basic: clean fresh towels, a mirror, a couch, a carpet. We didn't have lavish backstage areas or food requirements, because ultimately the artist pays for it. It all comes out of their money. There's one rock band who, after the gig, likes to have chefs come and cook chateaubriand. So those caterers are staying late, they're probably working until two in the morning, and all that just to cook steaks and have some very expensive red wine. It's got to cost three to four grand, for just eight people. And if you imagine it's the promoter who's paying, dream on.
Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses would have huge parties backstage after the show, catering for five hundred people. And that number of people backstage after a stadium concert is not so difficult. He'd have a big tent put up and he'd have it catered, and there would be lighting, and a theme, like a disco night or a Southern night. He was not getting it for free, any more than he was getting the lighting rig free. It gets knocked off the profit. But Ozzy and I would look at all this and think, You idiots. We'd get on our old tour bus and stop at a truck stop to eat.
And as for the drugs and the women . . . Bands would send crew out into the audience to find good-looking girls to bring back. And the word would spread: this band had hundreds of girls and they were all blond and they were mud-wrestling, blah, blah. And then in the nineties it was all very gay, and there were all these young bands coming up and they were all fucking each other, and they thought it was so daring. We'd gone through all that in the seventies. They were so stoned they thought they were shocking. But we were, "Oh dear, sorry, we've been there, seen all that."
This was exactly what I was trying to avoid by joining somebody else's festival. Like Lollapalooza, which was the festival at the time. It was very hip and paid very well. If Ozzy performed at a festival he would save half his crew: no lights, no sound, just his techs and the monitor guy. A handful of people; the saying is "clean money." And so, for six to eight weeks in the summer it's a gift: turn up, play, get paid, fuck off. Ozzy could have headlined for them: his audience was such that he could pull an audience of at least thirty thousand in any town. Some towns he could pull sixty or seventy thousand.
Lollapalooza was run jointly by the William Morris Agency and a singer-songwriter named Perry Farrell. So I called William Morris and said, "How about Ozzy?" And the guy I spoke to basically said fuck off, or as he phrased it: "Oh please, we don't take harder-edged bands, it's not cool."
This was at the time when grunge was at its height, and in musical terms grunge turned out to be the least creative of any genre of music ever. The only band to survive the grunge fever is Nirvana, and then, tragically, the singer committed suicide. Back then if you didn't come from Seattle, you lied and said you did come from Seattle. The music industry is like that--full of small, blinkered peons. Bon Jovi came from New Jersey, so when Bon Jovi was big, everyone had to come from New Jersey. The same was true when Detroit was big. And in the early nineties, if you didn't come from Seattle and you weren't grunge, you were dead. You were over. The record industry is run by yes men who follow the bouncing ball, and if the bouncing ball is bouncing in Detroit or New Jersey and you're not from there, you're fucked.
There are so few pioneers in the music industry, people prepared to take a chance. Ahmet Ertegun is one of the great pioneers with the foresight and the gift to understand music. He went out on a limb and signed Led Zeppelin. Clive Davis is another one, the same as David Geffen--they didn't stick to one genre of music. But the majority are pampered, untalented also-rans who have no musical ability at all. I don't even know an A&R man these days who can play an instrument or read or write music. All they have is an ear for what is current.
So we were turned down, but it got me thinking. If Ozzy was having this problem, what about the rest of our genre of bands out there? What about the fans? If Lollapalooza didn't have "hard-edged" bands, who did? True, they were very wholesome: Greenpeace would be there, and you could sign up to save the rain forest, and you'd go from forty singing monks on one stage to a hard rock band on another and Tom Jones on another. It was a mishmash.
And then there was Lilith Fair, which was all women, the peace gathering of the rock world, all long skirts and hemp and henna tattoos. So I decided what was needed was something that was not wholesome,
not saving a fucking rain forest or any other charitable cause, where you didn't run the risk of any monks moaning, just hard-edged music from morning to night without a break.
And that was Ozzfest.
But it would take some time to organize, and in the meantime Ozzy was fretting to get back on the road, so that summer we did a three-month tour called Retirement Sucks, and there I was back in it again, doing all the work I had hoped to avoid.
One of the biggest problems I ever face is dealing with the opening bands. Not the band members themselves, but their tour managers, the great majority of whom are fools, pumped-up, bumptious fools. Half of them are there by default, yet when they're out on the road they become ornery little shits with the power to make life very difficult and niggly. They're like an insect bite you keep scratching that just gets more irritating. But when they get too big for their boots, I keep them in line.
We were playing a big arena in LA called the Forum, home of the LA Lakers, and the support band was called Korn. They were on the Epic label, as Ozzy was, and Tommy Mottola had begged me to take them and so I did; Tommy had been so fantastic to us with the MS business. And it's fair to say that the band was good musically speaking, but the people around them I called the Ship of Fools. They were all young guys who hadn't come up through the business and they didn't know shit from piss.
As I am running the tour I expect to be treated in a certain way, and I expect my headliner to be treated in a certain way, and I put down rules and regulations. For example, when Ozzy comes down the hallway to go onstage, I don't want to see anybody there. Not one single body or face. Because of course each band comes with its own posse of people: a friend of a friend, your next-door neighbor, your kids, people from the management company, people from the publishing company, merchandising people, girlfriend, drug dealer. A whole sea of people.
And there is nothing worse for an artist coming out of their dressing room, psyching themselves up to go onstage, than to have some idiot come up and say, "Hey, Oz, this is my neighbor, can I have a picture and can you sign my girlfriend's tits?" I always make it a rule that I don't want to see any fucker for that five-minute period from when Ozzy leaves his dressing room until he gets out on that stage. It's his. The only people with him are the stage manager, the production manager, Ozzy's security and Tony. And they walk him nice and slowly to the ramp. He can psych himself up, do whatever he does before he hits that stage. I think to myself, he's fucking earned that time. And people should be respectful of that.
With Korn, we had a couple of times when there'd be some idiot doing this and doing that. And then a couple of times the band didn't turn up for the shows. And that is really disrespectful, not only to Ozzy and me--I would have to pick up a local band--but it's not what the kids have spent their hard-earned money for, and you want to give them a good show.
So one day I was talking to one of their managers--yes, it took two idiots to manage one band--and this guy was telling me how Korn was going to be making a video, so we were talking about the pros and cons and how horribly expensive it was.
And the next day they didn't turn up. This arsehole hadn't mentioned that the video shoot was the next day nor that they weren't planning to turn up for the show that night. This was the third time they hadn't turned up, so I called Epic and said, "You can keep your band, they're off my tour. They can fuck off. They're not coming back." The record company is begging and pleading. "You can't do this, they're a young band, it's not their fault, it's their managers," and the rest of the bullshit. And I even get Tommy Mottola on the phone. So I go to Ozzy and explain the situation.
"Look," he says to me. "I feel sorry for them, they're young guys, let them back on to finish the tour." So OK.
So they come back, and I'm backstage, going down the horrible metal and concrete staircase at the Forum, and the manager is coming up. And as he passes, he stops and he pats my arm. And I do not like being touched at the best of times.
"I'm so glad that Ozzy made you see sense," he says, still patting.
Then I say, "Take your fucking hand off me. Never touch me. Ever." And his hand was still there. "I fucking told you, take your hand off me," I said again. He was a big man, six foot four and broad, and I kicked him in the knees with my foot, and he stumbled down the stairs.
From that day on there was very bad energy between us. Another time, one of their bands--again, let's call them the Two-headed Twat--wanted to leave and come with me. In the end it didn't work out, but a year or so later, one of the two original idiots called me up.
"I'm warning you," he said. "Stay away from the Twats, otherwise you will have no career in this industry."
"Listen, kid," I replied. "When you were sucking on your mother's tits, I was working with artists that were selling millions and millions of records. Go fuck yourself."
The last thing in the world anyone should do is threaten me. Because I don't threaten well. I was weaned by the King of Threats. And not only threats; somebody that actually would carry out those threats. So for people to get heavy with me it's like, You have no fucking idea who you are dealing with. Because I would bite your fucking head off and stick it up your arse. Nobody can frighten me.
April 21, 2005, midday
Beauty salon, Beverly Hills Hotel
I'm sitting in Kay's salon, looking like an extraterrestrial, my hair in silver-foil-wrapped spikes, waiting for the color to "cook." Another client is talking to me, a woman in her thirties, a comedian. I don't know her except from seeing her on television.
"You know what, Sharon? This isn't bullshit, this is really straight talk. You should write a book. You are always so honest, and as a woman you could answer those questions about what to accept in a man. How do you know what you can work through and get past? How do you know you can overcome certain things?"
"You don't. But I learned many, many years ago that if you're with a man and there are things that bother you, you can't change them. You think you can change them. You can't. You have to accept them."
"It's intriguing to me how you can love them, and accept them. And what do you accept? But when do you walk? And how do you know when something cannot just be safe, but can flourish? Like you made your relationship better. How do you know? How do you know when to walk?"
"I would walk, and walk over the other side and be more unhappy without him than with him. Nothing is perfect: this relationship was given to me for a span of time, and I was just better with him than without him. It's hard when you suddenly wake up and you're old enough to realize you can't ever change people. But that's just how it is. You can't."
"But every woman is always wondering what do you take, and what don't you take? When do you stay and when do you go?"
"I was just better with him than without him."
"I want an Ozzy," the comedian said, laughing. "The later years! And definitely you should write a book. It'd be a bestseller."
17
Ozzfest
From the moment it began in 1996, Ozzfest was a huge success. That first year, we did only two dates, Phoenix and Los Angeles. It took the same format as the other festivals, in the sense that it started early and went on all day, but it was a completely different vibe. You could get your tongue pierced, your tit pierced, and no way could you sign up for a good cause. But I had no idea when I started that we would still be doing it in ten years' time. The following year, it really took off. In 1997 we went to twenty-two cities around America.
To give an idea of the scale of the operation, we travel with about sixty crew, all employed directly by us. There are two stages--one the permanent stage at the venue, plus a second stage that gets put up when we arrive. Ozzy always headlines, playing last, and there are twenty other bands, again, all paid by us. The total number of people on the road ranges from 500 to 600, depending on how many are in the bands and their entourages. To put that in perspective, every day we cater to 550 people, three times a day, with extra food to take to their buses after the show.
In addition there is the union crew, locally employed. There are the buses for the bands and crew, and then there are the trucks for the equipment. And then there are the carnies. The carnies are like the fairground part of it: they do a climbing wall, game stalls, that sort of thing. The same people travel around with the tour. I have nothing directly to do with the carnies. All I do is approve what they do: one of them spray-paints topless women, one does tattooing. I don't pay them; they buy space on the concourse area.
We play in "sheds," what in England are called amphitheaters: outside venues of about sixty acres of ground, with permanent stages, permanent backstage facilities, and permanent facilities of toilets and drinks and food. The roof over the stage covers about 10,000 seats--these are the premier seats, which cost more. Then you have the lawn area that has no shade or cover, which can take another 20,000 to 30,000 people. And there are towers and PA systems and screens so people can see and hear. Then there's the area when you first enter the building, where you can get refreshments and get into the carnie concourse.
When it comes to the Ozzy official merchandise, the T-shirts, the CDs, although we provide everything, the facility actually sells it, using their staff and taking a percentage, and they make shitloads of money because we open the doors at nine thirty in the morning and close at eleven at night.
The area we use for the second stage is usually a portion of the parking lot. As soon as we arrive, our crew puts up the stage with the help of the local union crew, with a sound system and tents to change in. In order to get it up and running by nine thirty, when the first band starts playing, they have to have been working for two and a half hours. Usually our crew has loaded and packed the trucks from the previous night by three in the morning. So it's very, very tight. As our main stage doesn't start until four, everyone works first on getting the second stage up and running.
Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography Page 26